


Mr. and Mr. Big Pile of Dust or, The Worst Witch

by executrix



Category: Firefly
Genre: Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-29
Updated: 2011-04-29
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You ignore River at your peril.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mr. and Mr. Big Pile of Dust or, The Worst Witch

**1**  
River, newly sedated, felt the lassitude ripple through all her limbs. She wanted a pen to jot down some haikus before she fell asleep, but she was too tired to get up and get it.

She yawned, and the pen rose from the table and floated over to her. {{Hmm}} she thought. {{Might be able to do something with that.}}

2  
The next morning she awoke, and felt alone, alienated. The first person whose path she crossed was the Shepherd. "Ah, River," he said heartily. "You're looking remarkably chipper. I bet you're like me—imagining that if we were planetside, it would be a glorious sunny day with the flowers in bloom."

"You observe, Watson, but you do not **see** ," River told him.

Next she went to the lounge area.

"Go bother someone else," Mal said. "Jayne an' me here are havin' a tug of war with the chain of command."

"Suppressed homoerotic tension!" River muttered. "Why don't you two go and get married…or at least get a room?"

Inara, a waft of lily of the valley surrounding her, stepped into the room. "Mal, Tekla's on the terminal. Please swear to me that when you take advantage of this invaluable contact and go see her, you won't permit this to degenerate into the mephitic stench of your SOP…oh, hello, mei-mei. What a pretty skirt that is."

{{Well, at least somebody notices I'm here,}} River thought.

Book wondered why the lights had dimmed. He went over to the comlink.

"Sorry, Shepherd, looks fine in here and none o' the readings are wonked," Kaylee told him. He shook his head to clear it, and then stretched his length on the floor after a close encounter with a pillar that he didn't see at all.

Eventually Simon almost tripped over his prostrate body. He ran a full battery of tests, but couldn't detect any abnormal readings.

 **3**  
"Captain Reynolds," said Tekla of the House Madrassa. Inara had warned her that nothing could lift the embittered war veteran's saturnine gloom.

"It's the happiest day of my life! Look!" Mal said with a simper, shoving his left hand practically up her nose. There was a hideous ring with a gigantic purple-and-orange stone, vaguely shaped like a beetle, clinging to his fourth finger on spidery legs. "I'm engaged!"

"Ah. I see. Charming." Tekla began to launch into her explanation of the delicacy of the task she was about to entrust to him, something upon which the entire future of the House depended. Nothing but Inara's heart-felt assurances had induced her to trust this man.

"You'll really like him," Mal said dreamily. "Well, nobody really likes him."

"I think you can see yourself out, Captain Reynolds," she said, although once Mal's back was turned she had a House servant follow him out and then count the spoons.

 **4**  
"That could have been a contact worth thousands of platinum," Inara said repressively. "And, as usual, you ruined it. I hope you're happy."

"Well, y'know, 'Nara, this havin' it all stuff…it's hard to combine marriage and career."

"Fine!" Inara said. "I hope you have hundreds of fat alien assbabies."

"Why?" he said, his brows knitted. "Is there blubber?" The cloud passed, and a blithe smile lit his face. "Can you imagine me an'Jayne with a passel of critters?"

"Easily," Inara said. "Although it would be just as horrifying if they had your body and his brain as vice versa."

"Wanna be bridesmaid?" Mal asked.

"Take a long walk off a short pier, Mal."

 **5**  
"Thanks a big lot, after all I done for you," Kaylee said.

"What'd I do wrong THIS time?" Mal asked.

"Jayne asked me to be bridesmaid and you didn't."

"Well, Zoe's gotta be Matron of Honor, and you got different coloring…"

"Brown looks good on everyone, don't it?"

 **6**  
"My ring!" Mal said. "Lookit my ring, everybody!"

"Bought that for my Ma, but gave it to Mal instead," Jayne said fondly, nipping at Mal's ear (fortunately, the reattachment held up well).

"And they look askance at **my** family romance," Simon said.

"How? What? HOW?" Wash asked.

"Three excellent questions," Book murmured from the couch in the lounge area.

"Err," Simon said. "I think I can explain this. Remember when you said, 'Yeah, but she's OUR witch'? Well, it appears that inadvertently you were prescient…"

"Meanin' what?" Jayne asked.

"Fairy tales are true," Kaylee said, wide-eyed.

Jayne sat down in Mal's lap, and promptly tumbled off, so Mal stood up for Jayne to take the chair. The smaller man straddled Jayne's lap, grabbed a handful of hair on each side, and started to nibble at his moustache.

"Okay, the reason I called you here today," Mal began, and giggled as Jayne tickled his ribs, "Is there's a lot of plannin' to do before the big day. Won't be a church wedding, tell you that for nothin'."

"Times nothin', carry the nothin'…" his fiance said. "Also, what I want to know is, should I carry a bouquet of Vera an' what?"

"Yellow roses and babies' breath?" Kaylee suggested diffidently.

"Yellow. That brings up a point of order. Aren't you still married to Saffron…to YoSafBridge…?" Simon said.

He and Book got into a long discussion about voidable and void marriages on grounds of, e.g., non-consummation and lack of consent.

"Everyone in denial over the spectacle of Mal and Jayne practically consummating their marriage in front of our very eyes, over here! Everyone else, somewhere else!" Wash cried.

"Hello, blind now?" Book said.

"Can I be blind too?" Wash asked.

"Well, I had in mind a garden wedding, maybe at the Guild House here," Mal said. "Tekla didn't seem too warm and welcomin' on that though."

"Whitefall?" Jayne suggested. "That big park, out in the desert?"

"Smart thinkin', bozo," Mal said. "Next thing you know we'd be registering as Mr. And Mr. Big Pile of Dust."

"Canton!" Jayne said. "We could take the pictures in front o' my statue."

"Or, in this case, Mr. And Mr. Big Pile of Mud," Simon said. "With an obligatory stop at the Gay Mudder Rick Memorial."

"Well, he's right out of it—maybe got a kid brother though—but we could look up that little gal from that night. Huh, she was somethin'. Bet she'd be glad to see me."

"You're a pig, Jayne," Mal said.

"Yeah, well, I'm not the one who wanted 'Wind Beneath My Wings' for the first dance," Jayne said.

"Hey!" Wash said.

 **7**  
The comm from Inara's shuttle sounded. "My cortex terminal reports demonic infestation," she said.

"I am D'Hoffryn, Dealer of Vengeance!" shouted a tall, thin creature who had just walked through the door to the dining room.

"Huh," Zoe said. "Never got a demon before."

"I wasn't talking to **you** ," D'Hoffryn sniped.

"Why is he wearing that stupid gray hat?" Jayne asked.

"Look who's talking!" Wash said.

"Wanna take that outside?"

"Wash! Pookiepants! _Bizui_ or you'll **both** take it outside! Right here in the Black!"

"Err, Sir, parts of your body seem to be, uhhh, deliquescing," Simon addressed the newcomer. "Would you like me to take a look at that?"

"I don't know," D'Hoffryn said. "Are you in network?"

"It's all right, friend," Book said. "Boy's off his game at the moment anyhow."

D'Hoffryn walked over to River and put his hand on her shoulder. "Your magic is strong, but your pain? It's like a scream that pierces dimensional walls."

"Oh, good," River said. "At least somebody notices me."

"And your teenage angst bullshit has a body count!" D'Hoffryn said admiringly. "We have a really sound Vengeance Demon Intern program with slots available right now."

"Yeah, well, of course slots are available," River said, pouting. "I had three Career Days at the Academy, and, like, Vengeance Demon Intern was the lamest booth there. At least the Blue Hands Guys booth handed out little miniature bleed-to-death sticks."

"So you're not interested?"

"As if," River said.

D'Hoffryn vanished, shouting, "If that's the way you treat magic, you don't deserve to have any!"

Book blinked, and at last that actually accomplished something. He crossed himself and murmured a prayer of thanks.

Mal and Jayne sprang apart, horrified. "Euuwww!" Mal said. "Jayne lips! Lips of Jayne!"

 **8**  
"Eat a cookie," remorseful River said. "Ease my pain. I made Fruity Oaty Bars! Oh, and Simon…I just scrubbed off the bottom of all the rungs on the catwalks. With your toothbrush."

"That's my sister," Simon said with a rictus.

The crew gazed askance at the cookies on the plate. The problem wasn't so much the carbonization on the bottom, as the wet…sticky…very RED…stuff in the middle. The confections looked like something out of the Reaver Junior League cookbook. "My recipes are problematic," River said sadly.

Fortunately the decision was taken out of their hands, as the ship lurched and cookies (and crewmembers) went flying.

"What the _tien shao deh_ , Kaylee?" Mal asked.

"Dunno, Cap'n," Kaylee said over her shoulder, running to the engine room to check. "Somethin' blew, I guess."

**Author's Note:**

> A fusion of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Something Blue," although in that case the Buffy/Spike relationship actually did become canon.


End file.
